Stephen Talbot
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| Stephen Talbot | |
|---|---|
| Born | Stephen Henderson Talbot February 28, 1949 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Other names | Steven Talbot |
| Spouse | Pippa Gordon |
Stephen Henderson Talbot (born February 28, 1949, Los Angeles, California) is an award-winning TV reporter, writer, and documentary producer who began his career as a television child actor of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He is the son of actor Lyle Talbot.
He is best known for the early TV sit-com Leave It to Beaver, in which he had the semi-regular role as Gilbert Bates, best friend of Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver (Jerry Mathers).
Talbot went on to become an accomplished, Emmy award-winning "behind the scenes" contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service and its Frontline and Frontline World series.
He is currently developing a PBS music series, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders" and produces an online series of music videos called "Quick Hits."[1], [2]
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Having spent his early prepubescent years in front of the cameras on Leave it to Beaver as Gilbert Bates (56-episodes), Talbot has all but abandoned the character today.
"In the interests of historical accuracy I should say that, yes, Gilbert was a troublemaker and an occasional liar, but my character was certainly no Eddie Haskell -- that leering teenage hypocrite who spoke unctuously to parents ('Well, hello Mrs. Cleaver, and how is young Theodore today?') and venomously to the Beav ('Hey, squirt, take a powder before I squash you like a bug')."! [3] "I have spent my adult life trying to conceal my Leave it to Beaver past or correcting the historical record. Either way the series has become inescapable. When I was a kid, I loved acting; in fact, I badgered my father and mother until they allowed me to work. But how could I have known as an innocent 9-year-old that I was taking part in a television program that would live on for 40 years as an icon for baby boomers? In the early '80s, I turned down an offer to revive my role as Gilbert in a dreadful Beaver reunion series. "I'm trying to establish myself as a documentary filmmaker and an investigative reporter," I explained to the producers. "I can't go back to being Gilbert!"[3]
Talbot guest-starred on Lassie, M Squad, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Blue Angels, Perry Mason, Wanted: Dead or Alive , "The Donna Reed Show" and The Lucy Show. In 1960, Talbot played the role of Ronnie Kramer in the episode "I Hit and Ran" of CBS's anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson. Talbot also appeared in two The Twilight Zone episodes.[4]
On stage, Talbot co-starred as "Sonny" in William Inge's "Dark at the Top of the Stairs" with Marjorie Lord at the La Jolla Playhouse. He also played Dick Clark's ward in the only movie Clark ever acted in, "Because They're Young" (1960), a high school drama with Tuesday Weld and music by rock 'n roller Duane Eddy.
As an adult, Talbot turned from acting to journalism and did not dwell on his LITB heritage, turning down numerous Leave it to Beaver "reunion" offers in order to be taken seriously as a reporter. But in recent years he has begun to reflect on his "Beaver" experience in articles and interviews and even in a Frontline documentary, Diet Wars.[5]
[edit] Career
Talbot has reported, written and produced more than thirty documentaries, including two Peabody Award winners, "Broken Arrow" about nuclear weapons accidents and "The Case of Dashiell Hammett." He has had a long association with the PBS series, Frontline beginning with his documentary on the financing of the 1992 presidential campaign, The Best Campaign Money Can Buy, which won a DuPont Award. He is the executive producer of "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," a new music series for PBS, whose pilot episode aired in 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/soundtracks/>. His "Quick Hits" music videos appear on the PBS Arts website. <http://www.pbs.org/arts/exhibit/quick-hits-dengue-fever-music-video/>. Many of Talbot's documentaries were produced in association with the Center for Investigative Reporting, now based in Berkeley, CA.
He is the executive producer of "The Price of Sex," a documentary by director and photo journalist Mimi Chakarova about sex trafficking in eastern Europe and the Middle East. <http://priceofsex.org/> Chakarova won the 2011 Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York and the Daniel Pearl Award from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
[edit] Frontline
From 2002-2008, Talbot was the Series Editor and a senior producer for Frontline/World, the international TV news magazine program and web site. Based at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches, Talbot and colleague Sharon Tiller helped identify and mentor the "next generation of video journalists" whose work was showcased on Frontline/World.[6]
In 2007 he produced, "What's Happening to the News" a 90 minute episode of Frontline's "News War" series. Some of his other Frontline news documentaries include "The Heartbeat of America" (an investigation of General Motors), "Spying on Saddam", "Why America Hates the Press", "Justice for Sale" with Bill Moyers, and critical biographies of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.
His Frontline "investigative biography" of Newt Gingrich -- "The Long March of Newt Gingrich" (1995) with correspondent Peter Boyer -- has drawn renewed interest and was recently posted for online viewing due to Gingrich's current incarnation as a Republican presidential aspirant: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/.
[edit] TV journalism
In the 1980s, Talbot was a staff reporter and producer at KQED-TV, the PBS affiliate in San Francisco, where he produced local documentaries, as well as national PBS documentaries such as "South Africa Under Siege" (a portrait of Nelson Mandela's ANC in exile) and "The Gospel and Guatemala" with Elizabeth Farnsworth. At KQED, Talbot also reported and produced dozens of feature stories for The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour.
He has written and co-produced several PBS biographies of noted writers, including Ken Kesey, Beryl Markham, [[Carlos Fuentes]],[7][8] Maxine Hong Kingston and John Dos Passos.
With David Davis, Talbot wrote and directed The Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation, a two-hour history special that aired nationally on PBS in 2005, and was based on his earlier film, "1968: The Year That Shaped a Generation."
[edit] Writings
His articles have appeared in Salon.com, the Washington Post Magazine, The Nation, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. He wrote about Robert Mugabe in an article for the "Frontline/World" web site, From Liberator to Tyrant. In the 1970s, he was a reporter and editor for InterNews, a radio and print foreign news service based in Berkeley, California.
[edit] Awards
Talbot has won numerous awards for his journalism, including two national Emmy Awards, four local (San Francisco) Emmys, three Golden Gate Awards from the San Francisco International Film Festival, two Peabody Awards, a DuPont-Columbia Journalism Silver Baton, a George Polk Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club of America, a First Prize TV Award from the Education Writers Association, a National Press Club Arthur Rowse Award for press criticism, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
[edit] Personal life
Stephen Talbot is the son of the late Lyle Talbot, a movie star in the 1930s and a veteran TV character actor. He attended Harvard High School (now called Harvard-Westlake) in North Hollywood (class of 1966) and graduated from Wesleyan University (Connecticut) in 1970 where he was very active in anti-Vietnam war protests.
Stephen Talbot lives in San Francisco with his wife, Pippa Gordon. They have two grown children, Dashiell and Caitlin. Talbot named his son Dashiell, now a lawyer, after San Francisco mystery writer Dashiell Hammett. His daughter, Caitlin, is an actress who graduated from the American Conservatory of Theater in San Francisco.
[edit] Select filmography
- See the complete Stephen Talbot filmography at IMDB
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1957 | Leave it to Beaver 1959-1963 56-episodes (TV) |
Gilbert Bates |
| 1961 | The Twilight Zone Static (TV) |
The Boy |
| 1962 | The Twilight Zone The Fugitive (TV) |
Howie |
| 1982 | The Case of Dashiell Hammett (TV) |
Writer Producer |
| 1989 | Crossing Borders: The Journey of Carlos Fuentes (TV) |
Writer, Co-Producer |
| 1992 | Frontline The Best Campaign Money Can Buy (TV) |
Producer |
| 2004 | Frontline Diet Wars (TV) |
Host |
| 2005 | The Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation (TV) |
Co-Producer |
| 2007 | Frontline News War: What's Happening to the News (TV) |
Producer, Co-Writer |
| 2010 | "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders" (TV) PBS pilot episode |
Executive Producer |
[edit] Notes
- ^ Sound Tracks article, PBS Current, Sept. 19, 2011, http://www.current.org/music/music1118soundtracks.html
- ^ "Stephen Talbot tunes in to world music" SF 360, San Francisco Film Society, http://sf360.linkingarts.com/features/stephen-talbot-tunes-in-to-world-music
- ^ a b Talbot, Stephen. "Living Down Beaver". Mothers Who Think. http://www.salon.com/aug97/mothers/beaver970822.html. Retrieved 2006-10-08.
- ^ Stephen Talbot on IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0847972/
- ^ "Confessions of a Frontline Dieter" by Steve Talbot http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/etc/talbot.html
- ^ Frontline World video journalists bring world to Web, San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 2007.<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/12/DDQUSKM7D.DTL >
- ^ "Fuentes in a TV Film, On Life and Himself", Beryl Markham, New York Times
- ^ New York Times TV review of biography of Beryl Markham
